


To Build and Grow

by homsantoft (tofsla)



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Domestic, Gardens & Gardening, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-30
Updated: 2015-08-30
Packaged: 2018-04-18 02:02:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4688279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tofsla/pseuds/homsantoft
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Bull makes a garden.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Build and Grow

The first thing to do was to replace all the beams and timbers that showed signs of rot. The Bull sweated in the sun, measured and sawed and planed, but allowed that magic was a pretty good way to move the finished pieces around without calling in help. Allowed, too, the curl of Dorian's magic around him, an unconventional harness. Old arguments: I won't fall, who do you think I am. Dorian snapping in anger when pushed to fear. These boundaries, though, had been established years ago. Necessary risks against unnecessary ones.

A local paint stained the outside of the house a dull red. Harding's advice, and not unwelcome. In the wide web of correspondence that the two of them had managed to maintain in the years since the war, someone could be counted on to have an opinion about almost anything.

When it was done, Dorian, looking at the house that was becoming theirs, turned contemplative.

"There ought to be a garden, I suppose," he said at length. "But I really don't know the first thing about working the earth."

"Think I can figure something out," the Bull said, and Dorian nodded absently, as though he hadn't really heard, as though he thought no more of it; sank instead into the warmth of the Bull's hand on his back, let his thoughts linger on the care in the gesture.

 

 

A life unimagined and unimaginable: Dorian, sitting at a desk by the window and writing, the afternoon sun warm on his hands through the glass. He had never, as a young man, dreamt of a house. A mansion, perhaps; a grand villa, with servants and responsibilities, a fearful thing where the weight of a hundred generations might crush him. Expectation. If he thought of a better future it was one on the road—surprising even to himself, that it should be so. And as for the Bull—as for that—

The Bull, looking at Dorian framed by the window, brow creased in concentration and lips quirking in amusement at his own phrasing, found that he was where he wanted to be, after all.

His garden, then. There was no definite moment of becoming, but slow work, years of work, and he found that it satisfied. The rhythm of the year formed its own boundaries and placed its own specific demands, rules to understand and follow. 

He planted elfroot one year, a scattering of other herbs, let them grow in a tangled mass. Carrots and potatoes in their rows and furrows. Gourds. Considered the sun and the seasons, what could be made of the rocky ground. Stones pulled from the ground around the house made a wall, a good ache in his back and his shoulders, in his legs.

Usefulness, he thought, and then thought again, and set honeysuckle climbing the walls; found pretty purple flowers to plant by the gate. 

Dirt under his nails. Dorian smiled at that, kissed his hands just the same: the deepening creases in his palms and then, turning them, the knots of his knuckles. Felt the strength of the Bull beneath his fingers.

"What did you imagine when you were younger, when you thought about the future?" he asked, looked up at the Bull with curious eyes.

The Bull shrugged. "Not much of anything."

The Bull was so very truthful, but also a liar. He had imagined a great many things, as Dorian well knew; things far more terrible than Dorian's oppressive mansion. There had been bad days, more than a few of them, days of blood-haze and yelling and the knife-edge balance between control and loss. But certainly, not much of anything. An unbecoming.

It was Dorian, tired and worn and struggling to understand how he could have both his life and his homeland, who had made the call for them both. The Bull would never have done it. Could never. I will be something else, apart from battle and secrecy and politics? 

An impossible thought. And yet the Bull had wanted to believe it.

A home, then. A home and a garden. Children from the village down the hill hanging over the wall and watching the Bull with wide eyes, unknowing participants in a reinvention. He slipped them food, of course. Helped their parents mend fences, held a horse steady for the smith. A thousand things that needed doing and a dozen people who needed help.

You've always been good with your hands, beloved, Dorian had said later, in the dusk. He had laughed, too, with a fondness just as impossible as this new life. Just as real. A little flirtatious smile, and oh—

Oh—Maker, how I've missed you, Dorian had thought over and over again, let the Bull bend over him in a secluded corner of their garden, still young; given himself over to an easy pleasure that their fears had for some time rendered them too tender and raw to approach. Soft earth and crushed grass and long, lingering kisses. His fingers twined with the Bull's, and everything around them living and growing.


End file.
